As Linux becomes easier to install apps on and to configure for home internet usage, for regular folks it becomes more realistic to start out with it. I don't think a regular user could switch their machine from Windows to Linux with one CD and a reboot yet... right? Can anyone show us some links for how easy the switch is, and what wouldn't be supported in general after the switch?

FWIW, it's not a single CD. It's either several CDs or a single DVD, but yes, it is doable. Boot off the DVD, follow the install wizard, you now have a dual-boot (depending on distro your NTFS partition can be resized automagically), and you have to reboot only once during the process, unlike Windows' cryptic install screens, wiping out your MBR to prevent other OSes from loading, and having to reboot 4,281 t

Linux when it works is perfect. Linux when it doesn't is just weird and fucked up. I tried installing Ubuntu for a newbie recently, and sudo decided it just wasn't going to work. So I'm futzering around with weird commands and the Ubuntu forum for a couple hours, and yeah, my newbie was real pleased with her new system. Uh huh.

Now my home Ubuntu computer has decided (again!) that flash doesn't need sound. No more Youtube for me anymore...

The problem with sudo is very strange - but having sound quit on Flash is not all that uncommon.I've found that using either EasyUbuntu or Automatix tends to help get the multimedia stuff working. If a package update breaks it again, I just re-run which ever one I used and it fixes stuff again.

BTW: my own experience with these two utilities, if you haven't used them yourself --

Automatix's tweaks tend to work, but the script is often buggy and not exactly user friendly. Their repository is also almost unusab

As for me, I've used EasyUbuntu, Automatix, and Ubuntu Guide, and I'm just sick of tweaking stuff. I have another friend who I gave Mepis to (see my journal) and she's all cool with YouTube and podcasts and all that crap now and I'm jealous. She's the newbie, why can she do things I can't? So I think I'm going to switch to Mepis.

I've had the opposite experience. Linux is great when it works. When it doesn't, it's always been broken in a sane way. I can diagnose the problem and fix a config file and be pretty confident that the problem isn't coming back. I may not have understood the problem beforehand, but after I get a handle on it the solution is obvious. Windows, on the other hand, has never made any sense when it breaks. I suspect that Windows is as rational and fixable as Linux underneath, but it's even harder to figure out the obscure tweaks that may be needed to fix it, which leaves you with solutions like "install the driver again and hope it doesn't break this time" or "try reformatting".

I totally agree with this, most, if not all, of my experience is problems like this that can be clearly diagnosed and then fixed. Any other problems are also almost always related to hardware/drivers.
In response to the original request for the "one CD switch", Ubuntu is definitely what you're looking for, you burn the one liveCD, boot off the CD into an Ubuntu that is very similar to what will be on your hard drive, and then you run the installer using a shortcut on the desktop. 6 (I think) separate pag

Oh my God, can we please stop repeating this false, outdated "example". With Ubuntu (and many other distros) 90% of the programs that anyone needs are in the repositories, and installing from a repository is much easier than installing in Windows. Quake 3 doesn't happen to be in Ubuntu's repositories, but installing it doesn't have to be nearly as complicated as you make it sound.
Step One: wine/media/cdrom/setup.exe (oh horrors! the command line! well, quake 2 is in the repositories if you're that sc

I'm sure Windows is pretty easy to diagnose if you know your stuff, but I've found it much harder to get a handle on because I'm never sure what it's doing or how to make sure I've configured something as completely as possible. This is mainly because Linux is a more open system. For example, on Linux I can edit xorg.conf and be sure that I'm in control of what X is doing. If I'm trying to change my video card driver in Windows, I don't have a clue what Windows is doing underneath. The best I can do is coax

To paraphrase you:
XXX when it works is perfect. XXX when it doesn't is just weird and fucked up.
Yeah, I agree.
Though for me it's usually windows that's being weird, as I'm much more familiar with Linux.

Seems to me that it all comes down to a certain level of familiarity with the OS defines if XXX=Linux and YYY=Windows or the other way around. I think there is a fundamental difference in philosophy on how to manage an OS or how an OS should be structured to make it manageable.

Personally I think there is a much higher level of detail available in Linux than there is in Windows. But Windows tries to be more self configurable than Linux. Proof? The configuration tool for Linux is VIM. The configuration

Shudder... regedit. Actually there is nothing particularly evil about the tool itself. Some mechanism for comments would have been nice. The real wtf is the binary format, the "one big config file" for not only Windows, but all of your application settings as well, and the reckless abandon with which the monstrosity has grown. Single point of failure? You betcha. The actual implementation and use of the registry is a crime against nature. Somebody in Redmond should h

To be fair, the registry isn't nearly as prone to outright corruption when you're running it on NTFS 5 than it was in Win9x with FAT.

Of course, like you say, it's such a monstrosity... you can't actually walk through it and notice a problem like you can with config files.

The registry wasn't a bad idea (it's basically a standardized config file format with more efficient read/write and mutual exclusion), but the way Microsoft used it (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, anyone?) made it a mess.

Linux when it works is perfect. Linux when it doesn't is just weird and fucked up.

I find it's the opposite. When Linux doesn't work, I might be able to fix it, or at least see why it's not working. With Windows, it's a black box. I can try to reboot and uninstall/reinstall various drivers, service packs, DLLs, etc., and if I'm lucky, I'll come up with a procedure that mysteriously works more often than others. Actual solutions are often nowhere to be found.

With Windows, it's a black box. I can try to reboot and uninstall/reinstall various drivers, service packs, DLLs, etc., and if I'm lucky, I'll come up with a procedure that mysteriously works more often than others. Actual solutions are often nowhere to be found.

I wasn't comparing it to Windows. I like Windows even less.

It's probably because (proprietary) Flash doesn't support ALSA, and ALSA is how you get software mixing. It's probably trying to get exclusive access to the sound card, and failing due to

``I don't think a regular user could switch their machine from Windows to Linux with one CD and a reboot yet... right?''

It depends on how fancy you want to get, and on your hardware. Certain distributions (e.g. Ubuntu) make it very easy to install the system while wiping everything that was there off the harddisk, and they do a good job at autodetecting a lot of hardware.

Things get more difficult if you want to set up a dual-boot system, preserve (some) of the data that was on the harddisk before the Linux install, customize what apps are installed, run Windows or Mac software, etc. etc. Whether or not this is beyond the reach of any particular user is mostly up to how much this user knows and is willing to learn; i.e. it's not particularly difficult to wipe OpenOffice.org off an Ubuntu install and install Koffice instead, but it does take a certain amount of effort and knowledge.

As for hardware not being supported, there are certain classes of hardware that are problematic. Most generally, any new or unpopular-with-developers hardware that doesn't adhere to some standard and for which no specification is publicly available. In particular, WinModems (software modems), wireless network cards, and video cards (specifically, the hardware acceleration features) tend to be problematic. Having said that, in each of these classes there are plenty of devices that _are_ supported, and, of course, there are devices outside these classes that don't work. Also, sometimes things fail to work in Linux because they are broken, although they happen to work in Windows; e.g. I had a laptop once whose USB controller didn't work due to a wrong value listed somewhere in the BIOS; it (sort of) worked under Windows, but it took some patches to the Linux kernel to get it to work there.

Searching the web to see if your hardware is supported is a good idea, and I recommend anyone buying hardware to consider Linux compatibility even if they don't want to run Linux; if you ever do want to run Linux, at least your hardware won't prevent you from doing so.

Ubuntu Linux (and others) do install with a single CD and a reboot. My experience over about 10 recent installs is that all of my hardware (including WiFi) is supported. YMMV.

The standard Ubuntu install comes with the usual office suite, browser, email, and many more additional apps than I've ever been able to use. If you're tied down to a particular app that only runs on Windows, then Microsoft owns your ass; otherwise, it's a piece of cake.

I have no links but I switch on average one person a week from windows to linuxThe only panic is how they get on the internetA dialout modem is sheer panic....most of the time I will switch over to a known good modemOnly once did I hit a network card that didnt work and that was a Davicomand then mostly the 2nd most feared thing is their printer....especially an all in one monsterI've been lucky and never had to make an all in one work just print....or talked them intobuying a laser printer.I love it when s

It's the same thing when people say "XP is rock-solid for me" and I answer "I get plenty of blue screens in XP", they say "the problem is in the device drivers".

Distributions like Ubuntu, Mandriva, or Suse, which have powerful installers, usually get all the hardware working automatically. Other distros, like Debian, Gentoo, or Slackware normally need a bit of fiddling to get all the hardware working. But if you

3D acceleration doesn't work for nvidia and most recent ati cards out of the box, because binary only modules are banned on Debian, and install media won't include non-free section. You can get support by including non-free section in your repository and downloading the approopriate package.

It does work almost out-of-the-box on Debian, though. (Or, I guess technically, it will work in the next release. It works in etch.) Want the ATI drivers? Run "module-assistant auto-install fglrx" (or the short fo

I'm a computer geek who regularly uses Windows. Yes, I know, boo, hiss, whatever. My software development happens under Windows because that's what I learned on, that's where most of the market currently is, and that's what I've got a job doing. I'm not going to stop working for a company I like doing what I enjoy just because I happen to do my work on Windows.

In any case, periodically I load Linux on an alternate hard disk in my machine to play around with it and see what I can get going. I do like to keep my knowledge of it up in the event that I run into it on the job (I also do field work from time to time), but I also like to see how far it has progressed. At some point in time, I really would like to use it as my core operating system, even if I still have to drop into Windows when I work.

Recently (about a week ago), I decided to try a couple of different distributions. They all seem to suffer from one problem -- the USB keyboard no longer works when it hits the installer. "You forgot to turn on legacy mode for USB in your BIOS!", is the first thing most people would say, except that I haven't forgotten to turn it on. It works perfectly fine for the BIOS-based boot menu. I even triple checked it, thinking I was missing something. I tried numerous options to try and get the damn thing working, to no avail.

Yes, I could get a USB to PS2 converter and yes, it does work fine after that. But that's not the point -- I shouldn't HAVE to do that. Critical things like that will kill any interest your average user will have in the operating system. But, for what it's worth, I was very pleased with what I saw after I did finally get it loaded. It's come a long way from the operating system I tinkered with 6 or 7 years ago.

Well, I downloaded Fedora Core 5 to try it out. I haven't touched anything by Red Hat in some time (I have a habit of using Slackware whenever I play around, for some reason). That was the first one that didn't work. I also tried the evaluation version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. I used to do a lot of work with Novell Netware back in the 4.11 days, so I thought I'd revisit Novell. I also tried Ubuntu, but I used an older version that I had lying around (Warty), so that's not exactly the best test.I

He doesn't want to install RAID he wants a simple USB keyboard to work. I've noticed this with several USB keyboards recently with friends complaining though I've never had it myself with the hundreds of keyboards I've installed Linux on...I can only assume it is a specific dodgy chip being used or some thing just off about the keyboards in question and changing distro's doesn't really seem to fix it. In the cases I've seen of it I've recommended that the user just buy another USB keyboard which has fixed

Yeah, I've found a couple references to problems with it from other people.

I downloaded the latest Ubuntu today, to try that. I was extremely pleased to find that everything works fantastic, including my USB keyboard. Must just be a distro thing... but I think I'll stick with Ubuntu. Been a while since I saw it lst, and from what I've seen so far, I'm liking it even more than Fedora. Based on the other comments to my post, I think Debian-based distros like my computer better.

You know, not saying you're wrong, but I'm getting tired of hearing this argument. Since when is it not your responsibility that your hardware is compatible with the software you want to run? Windows doesn't support every piece of hardware that Linux supports, either. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if, say, Ubuntu supported more hardware out of the box than Windows XP.

Bullshit.If Linux supports the USB keyboard when it's fully installed, there's no reason that the installer shouldn't except the programmers of it didn't bother to do any sort of QA process what-so-ever.

If you go to (to use an example) Ubuntu's website, and check the specs, and it says right there in black and white "supports USB keyboards," then that means it should support USB keyboards all-around. If it doesn't, it should say "supports USB keyboards (PS/2 keyboard required for install)" or something tha

I mentioned the distros in another message, but I'll post 'em here:Fedora Core 5SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10And I tried an old version of Ubuntu (Warty)

I would really like to use Fedore Core 5, though. I finished getting it running with a PS2 converter, but it still doesn't work with just the USB. From what I've used of it so far, I like it. I know I can just leave it like that, but it's bugging me, and I would like it to work without it.:) I'm not using an external hub, just the ports on the motherboa

IThe problem stems from the fact that the ISOLINUX used to boot the live CDs and installers does not load USB modules- USB detection and support is done by coldplug later in the boot sequence. Windows loads the drivers into its "live kernel" right when it starts up- that's why it takes minutes to get to do anything after you stick in a Windows CD to install but the Linux boot prompt shows up immediately. If you want to get this fixed, perhaps the guys that do ISOLINUX need to be contacted to load some USB H

``If Linux supports the USB keyboard when it's fully installed, there's no reason that the installer shouldn't except the programmers of it didn't bother to do any sort of QA process what-so-ever.''Right. So we'll mandate that people acquire every possible piece of hardware on the planet before they're allowed to put together a Linux distribution. Because, you know, the Windows installer also supports all makes and models of SATA drive and SCSI controller that an installed Windows supports, without requirin

Right. So we'll mandate that people acquire every possible piece of hardware on the planet before they're allowed to put together a Linux distribution.

That has nothing to do with what I said. What I said is that if the distribution claims to support a particular piece of hardware, they should QA their install process to make sure that particular piece of hardware works. I was assuming when I wrote that that the USB keyboard worked after the distro was installed but (as the original poster replied) it turn

``That has nothing to do with what I said. What I said is that if the distribution claims to support a particular piece of hardware, they should QA their install process to make sure that particular piece of hardware works.''But they didn't claim to support _that_ particular piece of hardware, they (allegedly) claimed to support "USB keyboards". The unfortunate user has a single USB keyboard that doesn't work. You claimed this meant the distributor didn't perform "any QA process whatsoever". Apparently, to

They may not have been intentionally misleading you. I have a video capture card and if someone asked me if it worked under linux then I would say yes. Then if it later came out that there were different versions of that card being sold under the same name I suppose you could say I was misleading you. But it would be more accurate to say the manufacturer was misleading you by saying that your card was the same as my card when it wasn't.

"Linux" is not a Personal Computing platform. It's a kernel that's wedded to the GNU toolchain, which is meaningless to most end-users and young developers starting out. Its a boon for people who 'do infrastructure' (including managed thin-clients) or gizmos with custom UIs. But thin-clients != personal computing. This only looks like a platform if you're a sysadmin or systems-oriented coder.

To anyone just wanting to run their PC, get user-oriented applications on CD or downloaded as a file... or experiment with some code that their teachers and pals across town can download as a file and run... "Linux" (nee Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu, Linspire, Xandros, etc, etc) feels like a big headache. Your friends are trying out "Linux" too? Well, you've probably got to learn packaging, dependencies, repositories, etc. before you can expect your experiements to run at all on anyone else's system. The fragmented distro scene is like chlorine against budding application developers needing platform stability in order to express their creative urge.

So in the crucial desktop PC space, Windows and Mac will continue to have a considerable edge.

People here often forget what makes the PC experience special: The uniformity of a platform aimed at *their* needs (not just those wanting to experiment with new encryption and packet-switching schemes), primarily the ability to install apps and drivers at will (and before you issue the kneejerk response, no Mac OS does NOT suffer by advancing these essential platform qualities).

Anyone wanting GNU/Linux + Whatever to shine as an alternative for PC users should get behind the new LSB Desktop spec. that is due this December/January. At least then ISVs (not just system hackers) will have something uniform to target as far as APIs and other features are concerned, and we should see more creative and wonderful applications that can draw end users to the platform.

To those who don't care or hate the idea, perhaps because of the notion that elitism is what keeps GNU/Linux good and secure, I suggest adopting a tolerant and polite attitude instead; No one will be forcing you at gunpoint to use distros conforming to LSB Desktop. The desktop PC needs a workable free alternative, and we're looking to geeks to either help or get out of the way.

Assume Linux and Windows marketshare was 50/50 and that your roommate had a daughter:His daughter wants to experiment with some simple ideas in automatically manipulating media files, and can choose her father's Windows partition or the SuSE partition on the same machine.

(We'll ignore that that SuSE installer will change the C: partition to 'hidden' which causes the XP disk checker to freeze on bootup, a Redmond "oops". Assume the installation works.)

The Linux pride, or simply pride, campaign of the open source movement has three main premises:

* that all people of all computing orientations should be proud, not ashamed, of being young white middle-class Linux-geek men;
* that computing diversity is a gift to young white middle-class Linux-geek men;
* that computing orientation and operating system type are inherent, unless of course you dual-boot Windows and FreeBSD and are therefore only fooling yourself.

Pride Parades are held worldwide, wherein young male white middle-class Linux geeks of all colours, ages, operating system types and backgrounds can walk down the centre of the main street of their city and commemorate the original Stallmanwall printer driver riots.

Many parades still have at least some of the original political or activist character, especially in less Linux-positive settings. However, in more Linux-positive cities, the parades take on an installfest-like character. Large parades often involve floats, coders, Mountain Dew, venture capitalists, and amplified music; but even such celebratory parades usually include political and educational contingents, such as local politicians and marching groups from open source institutions of various kinds. In some countries, Linux parades are now also called Linux Pride Install Festivals.

Even the most festive parades usually offer some aspect dedicated to remembering victims of Stallmanwall and anti-Linux FUD. Some particularly important Linux parades are funded by governments and corporate sponsors, and promoted as major tourist attractions for the cities that host them. Other typical parade participants include local Linux-friendly churches such as Emacs Community Churches and BSD Universalist Churches, PFLAB (Parents and Friends of Linux and BSD), and the nerd employee associations from large businesses.

Though the Stallmanwall riots themselves as well as the immediate and the ongoing political organizing that occurred following them were events that were fully participated in by BSD users, X11 people and future Sun founders as well as by white middle-class male Linux users of all races, genders and backgrounds, historically these events were first named Linux, the word at that time being used in a more generic sense to cover the entire spectrum of what is now variously called the Red Hat, SuSE or Debian community.

By the late '80s and early '90s, as many of the actual participants had grown older, moved on to other issues or passed away, this led to misunderstandings as to who had actually participated in the Stallmanwall riots, who had actually organized the subsequent demonstrations, marches and memorials and who had been members of early activist organizations such as the Linux Liberation Front and Linux Activists Alliance.

But eventually the language caught up with the reality of the community and the names have become more accurate and inclusive, though these changes met with initial resistance from some in their own communities who were unaware of the actual historical facts. Changing first to Linux and BSD, today most are called GNU/Linux/X11/KDE/GNOME/Mozilla/gcc (GLXKGMg) Pride Parades. But only by the sort of geeks even the other geeks don't want to hang out with.

Remember: just because you have a personal coding output of zero doesn't mean that you can't take full credit for the programming genius of others for a lifestyle of Slashdot, caffeine and masturbation.

And believe me, you haven't lived until you've seen twenty Linux geeks clad only in silver jockstraps.

It seems like Linux is now becoming a major competitor to Windows and Mac on the desktop. It hac come a long way. With the advancment of binaries like.deb,.rpm,.bin, and scripts it is getting easier and easier to install things on linux. Wine has gotten so that most Windows software with exception to some games and programs that need drivers will run. I can easily run IE, WMP, Shockwave, the latest Flash, Outlook Express, Office, and the like. More and more hardware vendors have been supporting linux. Th

This issue needs the attention of distribution teams. Bug #1 on Ubuntu's bug-tracker indicates their issue with Microsoft's dominance; Mark Shuttleworth should be sending delegates to OEMs to have a live Ubuntu experience included on the computer. The possibility of giving OEM's an edition of Ubuntu to be usd as the restore software for a broken Windows install (with the option of living with the Ubuntu recovery desktop or installing a fresh Ubuntu instance instead of recovering Windows) would be a good s

This is a nice illustration of what I mean when I say there is no such thing as "the Linux operating system". There is, however, "the Debian GNU/Linux operating system" and "the Fedora Core operating system" (as well as "the Windows operating system" and "the OpenBSD operating system").

GNU/Linux IS an operating system, and it is standardized, but it doesn't have any "handles" that end-users can (or would want to) grab hold of. So the ones that try to use it get a distro, with all sort of non-standard (non-LSB) stuff like X11, a window manager and the like.What Linux isn't is a PC platform. MacOS and Windows are PC platforms, NOT mainly because of their GUIs are standardized (in fact, they shift in usually understandable ways). Its because you can learn to program complex applications on W

Every time someone mentions blue screens, the Microsoft guys say "Oh, XP is stable for me, it never crashes!". Yet they still mention this "compile from source" which is so 1998.

Most of the applications I use today are available in one of the Debian or Ubuntu repositories, so a simple click in synaptic or adept will install it for me, including all the necessary libraries. I have also a few other apps, such as Google Earth for instance, that aren't under the repositories, but it has been a long time since I had to compile anything.

You Microsoft guys have no idea how complicated is getting software for Windows if you are a newbie. You just think it's easy because you are so familiar with the whole thing. Getting winamp or nero or whatever application you want is very easy if you know which app you need and where to get it. But show me where is the centralized application install function in XP, like Adept or Synaptic in Linux. Where is the simple way to look for a software to install, searching by category? I need a software to edit a video or to manage a network or to do scientific calculations, where is the simple interface where I can find it and install it with a few mouse clicks? Without knowing beforehand the name of the software? Let's face it, the closest equivalent to Synaptic or Adept in XP is Google!

Besides, even when I had to compile stuff in the past, it was much simpler to type "./configure; make; make install" in a console than trying to solve all those "missing vbrun.dll" problems one often got when trying to install software in MS-Windows. I may be out of date myself here, because it has been a long time since I did this, but I remember that even in 1998 automake/autorun were easier to use than solving all the incompatibility problems between windows applications and DLLs.

"You Microsoft guys have no idea how complicated is getting software for Windows if you are a newbie. You just think it's easy because you are so familiar with the whole thing. Getting winamp or nero or whatever application you want is very easy if you know which app you need and where to get it. But show me where is the centralized application install function in XP, like Adept or Synaptic in Linux."And where's the central repository of knowledge that tells me what's the best text editor of the 9,000 avail

I dual boot, FC5 at home, 4 at work. I didn't install 4 (one of the tech guys at work did it for me), but I did install at home, and it was a piece of cake. I've discovered now (past few months) that I'm using Linux for just about everything. I've gone back and forth over the years, but now it really is at a point, for me anyway, where it succeeds admirably on the desktop.I've said it before in these discussions, and I'll say it again (because repeating yourself is a sign of stupidity), the problem that

The second problem is that while I believe Linux is better, for most people it simply doesn't matter. If the computer does what you want it to do, why bother switching? What compelling reason are you going to give a Windows user to switch?

After a virus scare, and finding a crapload of spyware installed, a friend of mine became very interested in linux.

every tutorial I've seen just uses the command line anyway. I know you see it as easier, but I personally don't.

I think you've misunderstood. It's actually not that people want to force CLI on you or even that they think it's easier... Giving clear, unambiguous and succinct instructions for a GUI is often impossible and almost always significantly more laborous than giving the same advice for CLI. Try it and you'll see.

Installing in Windows just as easy as installing something on Linux. Frequently it's a h

And where's the central repository of knowledge that tells me what's the best text editor of the 9,000 available for Linux? The best media player, the best burning software?

Look, I know you're used to Windows which comes with a bare-bones text editor, a bloated pos for a media player, and no dedicated burning software, but Linux distros tend to come with decent programs to do all those things. If you're willing to use whatever some random guy uses too, then why not just stick with the perfectly usable def

And where's the central repository of knowledge that tells me what's the best text editor of the 9,000 available for Linux?

Who cares? Why do you need the best, rather than just one that does the job? And who defines "best", anyway?

Just read the descriptions, pick one that sounds like it might work for you, install it, and see if it does the job. If so, great. If not, pick another. Of course, if you have someone around that already understands the pros and cons, ask, but all of the packages in the

And where's the central repository of knowledge that tells me what's the best text editor of the 9,000 available for Linux?

There isn't a "best text editor" for Linux. Which text editor is best is a function of your personal tastes, the specific uses you have for it, and other things. Same, really, as on Windows (though the options are different.) No "central repository of knowledge" exists for either, you've got to figure out what works for you. There's lots of good resources on the net to find out about t

I'm not talking about installation as a user. I'm talking about the time it takes to set up the software for distribution as a DEVELOPER.With windows, I can distribute an app as a zip file, confident it will run without adjustment on a majority of windows systems. The.dlls can be included in the directory of the app. It's five minutes of development time to create the binary, zip it up with.dlls, and ship it off to other people who'd want to use it. Or I can use NSIS as I get more advanced.

Link it statically. If you don't want to do that, then include all shared objects with the application. Dynamically link with those objects from the top application directory, or./lib.Rely ONLY on Clib (Xlib, and OGL). (and CLib can be supplied with the app as well).

Voila. "Click and run" application. Include a png icon for the application as well.

If you follow these rules, your application will be very portable. Even running with emulators such as QEMU to target SPARCs, etc.

i dont want to sound like an asshole or something but./configure; make; make install is not the way to go
if configure fails it'll still try to make it... etc./configure && make && make install is better assuming you are root when you compile things(and offcorse want the program to end in the your PATH)
best thing tho is to first read README INSTALL and then./configure and output the options to a fileSo you can consult them first before making the thing

*IF* Microsoft created a list of software in Windows, categorized by type it would be HUGE. There is no way they could include a list of all of the software made for Windows.

Now, for the sake of argument lets say the do include such a list that is somewhat manageable. Manageable meaning that it's not every piece of software made. Most software for Windows is not open source, therefore they would need to integrate some software purchase scenario within Windows to connect to the software maker, download th

One out of MANY counterexamples to your argument: http://www.download.com [download.com]. Come on, how many applications do you think exist on Windows ?? Do you realistically think it would be possible to have ONE central directory of all of them ? Talking about not having a clue...

Getting winamp or nero or whatever application you want is very easy if you know which app you need and where to get it. But show me where is the centralized application install function in XP, like Adept or Synaptic in Linux. Where is the simple way to look for a software to install, searching by category?

Download.com. will serve as an example. I could as easily have chosen a half-dozen others.

Amen to that. I just wanted to add to this a mention of Autopackage [autopackage.org], which has done wonders, not only for amazing ease of installation (did you say "a few clicks"? Autopackage is one-click), but also for wide-spread binary compatibility under GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux certainly is capable of binary compatibility, it's just that most distros don't care anyway (why should they when there's APT/Yum/Portage/whathaveyou?). The Autopackage project has developed some rather sophisticated wrapper scripts around the GNU

What if you're not using Ubuntu or Debian? Or, what if you are, but need different default options?

for as "rare" as it is, I seem to keep running into software that's not in my distro (very common) (SUSE 10). Stuff like Analog, postfix.admin, etc... and invariably, when i go to install these apps by tarball, they require that the programs that I do have in my repository be configured in a different way than SUSE configures them.

The only peice of software I've ever needed to get manually to plug into portage was the Sun JDK, as I've never used Maya. This is a very uncommon scenario.MS may have a website similar to gentoo-portage, but once the software is found, for every case in the MS instance, I must then go manually either download the software from the vendor or have a CD snail-mailed to me (how quaint) and this is the epitomy of the MS distribution chain. On Gentoo, for nearly every case, I simply:

It's a huge pain to distribute binaries for every different distro, so unless your app becomes popular enough for other people to do that work for you, (or the distros do it themselves) then a significant amount of development time is spent just on packaging and deployment.

If you are writing software that isn't going to be included and packaged for you by a distribution, then you can just use Autopackage [autopackage.org] to create a single distro-agnostic binary with its own built in installer. Autopackage even provides lib

With windows you're guaranteed binary compatibility on a majority of systems

Because Windows only runs on x86 PeeCee hardware of Pentium III and later vintage. And everyone's running the same distribution (Windows XP). OK - maybe two distros, XP and 2003 Slow-Down-My-Server-To-A-Crawl Edition(TM).

``It's still much, much easier to deploy applications on Windows, even when you're using the GNU toolchain.''

For you or for users? Installing and maintaining software that is packaged for distributions can be easier than it is on Windows, and so much software has been packaged for Debian and Ubuntu that I feel the claim that "software installation and maintenance is easier on Debian than on Windows (or OS X)" is justified. On the other hand, packaging software for various distros can put an enormous burden on the developers.

Going the other way, providing software that can be installed on many different Linux distributions is a piece of cake for the developer. As long as you stick to a few sensible conventions (like not assuming things that tend not to be true across distros), users should be able to install your program without too much trouble, once they have all the necessary dependencies in place. Of course, this effort might still be too much for would-be users.

Other alternatives are targetting only a select few distributions (see also my other post about "the Linux OS" not existing), and/or leaving the packaging in the hands of the distributors - arguably, it is their job. Also, it's not uncommon for users to post step by step instructions or even creating binary packages for installing software on distributions that don't include that software.

Yes, but this comes with a hefty price tag. For example, binary compatibility will be broken the moment another hardware architecture comes along (AMD64, anyone?). It's entirely possible that this has kept PCs from evolving past x86 for so long - with actual drawbacks; various other architectures have been more performant, more affordable, etc. at various points in time. And that's just the hardware side; I'm sure many people can point out bugs and vulnerabilities that have persisted because of the need to maintain binary compatibility with some flawed earlier system.

``with Linux, it's pretty much expected that your users are advanced enough to be able to compile from source.''

Which doesn't have to be very advanced at all. For a lot of software, a single command suffices; often, it's the familiar./configure && make && sudo make install mantra (which isn't necessarily more complex than your average Windows installer), and there are often front ends to the compilation that ease the process.

Also, if a user wants to run your software on an operating system that you do not support, is it your fault or theirs if the installation isn't easy? With the source, at least they _can_ make it work.

``Ironically, Windows with mingw et. al. seems to be a more hospitable environment toward deployment of open-source software than "Linux" is.''

Some companies (at least Google) actually develop their software against winelib, and then create a Windows binary that works on Windows and any x86 Linux distro with Wine installed. Although I dread the ugliness of win32 programs on Linux, it does solve the binary compatibility problem.

Oh, most definitely for *users* both systems are pretty much equivalent, once everything is packaged.I'm talking about for me, the developer, deploying for all the distros under the Linux umbrella is much more difficult than it is to deploy on Windows or FreeBSD.

It's funny that whenever anyone brings this up, they get attacked, but really what developers want to concentrate on is writing code that's interesting to them. I can do that on any platform. I do that on Windows now because it's just so easy to s

``I'm talking about for me, the developer, deploying for all the distros under the Linux umbrella is much more difficult than it is to deploy on Windows or FreeBSD.''Yes. And that's exactly because there are all these "distros under the Linux umbrella". I feel people need to realize that these are really different operating systems, otherwise we keep getting stuck in things like "Linux doesn't have $nice_property, because I know this one distro that doesn't have it". I feel, but this _is_ my personal opinio

Deploying updates is even easier; it happens whenever they run the application.

Again, easier for you... For the user this approach means tens or hundreds of applications that have their own update methods (some need to be started, some want you to click 'update' somewhere, etc.) with different UIs for the updating. It also means security implications as the user now has X additional programs that are connected to the internet.

Stand-alone installers have some good properties compared to package manageme

Again, easier for you... For the user this approach means tens or hundreds of applications that have their own update methods (some need to be started, some want you to click 'update' somewhere, etc.) with different UIs for the updating.

Yes, I can see how the act of simply starting the program is more complex for the user. Actually most programs today on Windows check for updates and / or install them themselves. Acrobat does this, Firefox does this, Windows itself does this.

``Installing my application is simple. The users click a link and allow the installer to run.''Good! Does the installer ask any questions? If so, does it explain what the questions mean, what the consequences of each answer are, and what answer one should pick?

``Deploying updates is even easier; it happens whenever they run the application.''

Ooh, spyware! Or, at least, it could be...if it's closed source and it connects to your website, without me telling it to, how do I know it's only checking for updates?

Cue up the Gentoo jokes...The 'compile from source' is what I like about Gentoo. I ran Linux for quite some before moving to Gentoo, and when it came time to install those non-distro rpms, it was frequently a crap-shoot. Try the rpm, learn about a missing dependency. Grab that, learn about its missing dependency, maybe up-level from distro standard. Grab this, find out that it doesn't play well with my distro, etc. I got quite a few non-distro things installed from rpm, but there were things that didn't, an

No jokes from me. I typically use FreeBSD, and the compile from source idea is just fantastic. The problem is that only Gentoo uses it, so unless every other Linux distro adopts that, the problem remains.

What FreeBSD gets right that Gentoo really doesn't focus on is binary compatibility, such that I can download a package for a specific release of FreeBSD that's the same as if I had compiled the port with default settings. I'm sure Gentoo will get there someday.

Mainly because when you distribute for Windows you know you're normally going to have administrator access to the machine and can use any registry key and installation directory you want as long as it's obfuscated enough to miss other apps through sheer luck. Of course those are all just bad assumptions and Microsoft tells you not to expect such access, but 99% of the developers seem to write with that level of access in mind. I've had numer

Mainly because when you distribute for Windows you know you're normally going to have administrator access

As usual, the existence and relative success of OS X negates such claims.

Automatic package managers + huge repository seem nice at first. Until you realize there are Zero independant application developers offering great stuff for your OS, because the distro differences and their PMs continually massaging/tossing around system components have scared off those types of developers. Want your stuff to ins

I got my fiance stuck on linux after making her laptop run with kde on gentoo using the xcomposite module to make it look pretty (that and she thinks the penguin is cute). I've tried to explain to her why I have to compile everything, but she still says "Isn't it easier to just make one file that will run on all of them?" As much as I hate to say it, she's right, which is why windows has the advantage. As the variations on hardware are seemingly infinite, the possibility of compatibility is much larger w

Eh? Windows runs on watches, Playstations, and Powermacs these days? And as for "if you have the choice, which would you pick?" I'd say Windows on the desktop, perhaps, but nowhere else; Linux is ok anywhere (but that's only because "the Linux OS" doesn't exist: I'd like a GUI on my PDA, but not on my router).

I do. Surprise!
It's just that about 98% of people I see on the (Linux support/talk) forums are real linux zealots. They won't use anything with closed source. They want to "kill" Ms, etc, etc. So everytime I see "Linux ready for desktop", "Linux agains MS" I write posts like that.